The Fighter Who Didn't Fight
Updated: Nov 14, 2021
I knew I wasn’t a writer
I was a fighter
I still am
Just
Injured
Torn hamstring
A bad tear
It had been 12 weeks
I had gotten Covid 4 days after the tear
I was in bed for 12 days
4 days of being sick
And 8 days of isolation
It wasn’t a bad case of Coivd
Worse than others
But
Just a fever
And a lot of sleep
Than
My dog died
I drank
A lot
And ate
A lot
And cried
A lot
I wrote as an outlet
Just like I did when she had broken me
The words poured out
Effortlessly
They weren’t good words
I was often drunk when I wrote them
I was often drunk in general
I was still working out the upper body
Or
At Least I was
Then
My gym caught on fire
Not my fighting gym
But my gym that I lifted and did cardio
The damn sauna man
I was getting out of shape
I could feel it
I could see it
My physique was changing
And it was changing fast
The damn hamstring wouldn’t heal
I started to read more
A lot more
Bukowski
Rand
Celine
Orwell
Huxley
Frankl
Solzhenitsyn
A few of the greats
I listened to lectures
Lectures on psychology
And
On philosophy
I liked existentialism
And
objectivism
It was all just to pass the time
The time without training
I wasn’t an intellect though
I just liked to learn about that stuff
I wasn’t a writer
Not yet
I was a fighter
I could still feel it
Feel it deep in my bones
I had spent a million hours perfecting my craft
The day I tore my hamstring
I had just gotten done doing an intense hour of kickboxing sparring
I felt great
Maybe the best I’d ever felt
I was seeing everything
Splipping
Countering
Bobbin
Weaving
Spinning
Kicking
Everything was landing
And I was hardly hit
My cardio was great
I always kept a great pace
Afterwards
One of my teammates complimented me
He said,
‘dude, watching you fight is like watching art’
Absolute music to my ears
That's exactly what it was
That's what I wanted others to see
My art
It was the roconization that I had longed for
The 10 years of work was paying off
30 minutes later
Doing jujitsu
The hamstring went
It was my own fault too
I swear I can still hear the pop
I can still feel it
Injuries were all apart of the game
God it feels like a lifetime ago now